Meaningless denial: First, because
Russia does indeed target civilian areas and civilian infrastructure, and has
been since the beginning of its direct military intervention in the conflict. Second,
because the Assad regime and Russia are allies. Third, because Russian experts
are responsible for coordinating all aerial strikes in that part of the
country. Fourth, the planes are made in Russia, Syrian pilots are trained in
Russia, and no regime jet would be flying at this stage had it not been for
Russian technical and logistical support. By now Russia is culpable in every war
crime that the Assad regime is busy perpetrating. The same applies to Iran
whose experts are the inventors of the infamous and deadly Barrel Bombs.

20:56

War Porn

The new and sickening response to
Syrian activists’ attempt at documenting and reporting on ongoing war crimes in
Syria is to accuse them of perpetrating war
porn. Apparently, this is worse than the war crimes themselves. I guess the
point being to let everybody kill in peace, especially the worst offenders of
all: the Assad regime the Russians and the Iran-funded sectarian militias. Activists
are free to document the crimes perpetrated by the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and other
extremist groups, and they are doing so, but, it’s when they document the
crimes of the worst offenders that they get called out, and shamed.

The Chinese military
is “willing to strengthen cooperation with its Syrian counterparts,” the agency
quoted the defence ministry as saying.

“They reached
consensus on improving personnel training, and the Chinese military offering
humanitarian aid to Syria,” the Xinhua report said of the Damascus meeting.

20:23

Onward
Shia Soldiers

Iranian soldiers carry the coffin of Abdollah Bagheri, a bodyguard of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was killed in Syria, during his funeral in Tehran October 28, 2015/ Reuters

Revolutionary
Guards Plan to Stay Quarter of Century in Syria. According to General
Mohammed Ali Falaki, the leader of the Iranian forces in Syria, Iran has plans
to launch the “Shiite Liberation Army” to fight on three fronts in Syria, Iraq
and Yemen, acting under the leadership of Al-Quds Force Commander Qasem
Soleimani.

The Iranian general
has also linked the establishment of this army with the participation of the
Revolutionary Guards in Syria’s fighting, asserting that the Shi’ite Liberation
Army will remain at the Syrian-Israeli border for up to 23 years in order to
complete the strategies of “Wilayat Al-Faqih.”

Barrel bombs
allegedly full of napalm were dropped on the hospital at around 1 a.m., putting
it completely out of service, according to a statement from Major Issam
al-Reis, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front. Around eight
barrel bombs were dropped, burning civilian homes in the suburb, located around
seven miles southwest of Damascus, he said.

19:29

“Yes,
he said this.” Episode: 301

"Sometimes, in the heat of
debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words
or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret
it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too
much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues." Donald
Trump

Hell may not have officially
frozen over, but drastic temperature drop has raised concerns about the local
economy based as it is on long-haul tourism.

Today, the
77-year-old ayatollah—who reportedly suffers from cancer—is seeking to cement
his legacy and to shape the political transition that will occur once he is
gone. The nuclear agreement provides him with the building blocks to do that,
and for now, at least, Mr. Khamenei and his allies look to be the deal’s big
winners. The next U.S. administration is likely to face an unhappy choice: to
continue to work with Iran or to challenge an increasingly entrenched supreme
leader and his Revolutionary Guard.

For liberal
anti-interventionists, Syria creates a clash between two dearly held forms of self-regard:
the feeling of well-earned moral superiority over the adventurists who got us
into the Iraq war, and the feeling of universalist compassion for all peoples
of the world. What do you do when your enlightened rejection of militarism is
undermining the credibility of your expressions of solidarity with the
oppressed?

Well, now we know.
You tweet about how bad you feel. You tweet about how shaken you are by images
of destruction and suffering. You express bewilderment at the senselessness of
violence. You engage in histrionics. You distract from the moral unseriousness
of liberal anti-interventionism by flattering yourself as morally serious on a personal
level. You’re haunted by the images of Aleppo, your conscience is tormented,
submit tweet, and now you’re a compassionate person who doesn’t have to say
whether we should get our hands dirty trying to stop the killing.

Or, if you were President Obama, you
speak about how many white hairs you now sport on account of the tragedy in
Syria.

Considering their growing
alliance with the United States, and their recent string of victories against the
Islamic State, the Kurds were bound to become more assertive when it comes to governing
Hassakeh and Qamishly – the two major Kurdish-majority cities in Syria where Kurds,
represented by PYD, the Syrian branch of the totalitarian PKK, still have to
govern in partnership with the Assad regime. There has always been tension
between the two sides, and the occasional flare, but violent clashes have started
taken place at shorter intervals over the last 12 months.

On the other hand, considering that
the Obama administration is unlikely to come to the rescue of its Kurdish allies
even at the cost of undermining its only anti-IS force on the ground, the
Syrian Democratic Froces, where Kurdish fighters make up the majority, the move
could be inspired by a Russian desire to simply embarrass the administration and
undermine its presence in the northeastern region, where Russia seems to be contemplating
the establishment of another military base for itself. As Russia’s designs in
Syria grow, the presence of America and other NATO partners is bound to become
too bothersome, even if their focus remain on fighting IS.

Naturally, considering the interviewer, David Aaron Miller, who
repeatedly defended and justified Obama’s Syria policy, and the interviewee, a
former peddler of the Assad-the-closeted-reformer-and-peacemaker myth in
Washingtonian circles, the interview comes as another exercise of arrogant self-congratulatory
self-deceiving sophistry. There is no balancing act in the interview itself and
whatever balancing act that the administration is supposed to be doing in the
Middle East has already facilitated the unfolding of the worst humanitarian
tragedy of our century, and has left the world and not only the region unmoored
and adrift at the mercy of extremist currents from the far right to the far
left. And America is now more vulnerable than ever to attacks from that constantly
morphing “JV team,” with the greater danger coming from the ranks of opportunistic
hate-mongering fools in search of easy answers, which are almost always wrong.

But Malley, Miller and their colleagues look at the current mayhem and they
project it back in time to justify the policies they advocated, blaming failure
on others and insisting that what was shown as predictable was actually
inevitable.

To me, this fatalism stands the truth on its head. For most of the predictable
is often preventable, provided there is the will and the means to act. The administration
had the means but lacked the will, because its members and advisers misread the
situation and its implications for the region and the world at every step in
its (d)evolution, and, rather than embark on some course correction, they’d
rather intellectualize their failures: they got Russia, Iran and the Blob where
they have intended them to be. The administration was not outmaneuvered. It behaved
rationally even if amorally. For yes, Malley, Miller, Rhodes and Kerry, not to mention
Obama himself, prefer to come off as amoral bastards, than dumb.

should not come as a shock, nor should it discredit the administration’s
approach to Iran, since the use of financial leverage to persuade Tehran to
curtail its most dangerous policies has constituted a core element of U.S. policy
toward Iran for nearly 40 years.

In other words, the “ransom” payment is about changing Iran’s “most
dangerous policies.” Well, considering that, since receiving the payment, Iran
has imprisoned more dual national citizens and increased its involvement in the
Syrian conflict, can we not argue that this particular instance of use of our financial
leverage against Tehran seems to have failed? To her credit, Maloney doesn’t
think that “the settlement was really a good deal.” Failure by another
name…

12:40 pm

Quote
of the Day: And Russia is our leverage…

“What is US leverage in
Syria?” Asks Clarissa Ward. "Russia is, and has been, part of that leverage in the past."
U.S. State Department Spokesman John Kirby answers.

12:29 pm

Few thousands iconic photos ago, there
was this…. Obama
said Assad should 'step aside'. But ever since those heady days of promise,
Obama chose to dance with death rather than prevent it. Here he is doing his
famous Nobel-prize award winning Shirk
& Shift routine.

From the Annals of the Holy Deliricon:

(The) Shirk ‘N’ Shift (Also, the Shirk & Shift): The political and social practice of
shirking responsibility for a certain developing situation, while attempting to
shift the blame for the eventual mess resulting from the failure to act in a
timely and effective fashion unto other parties.

Example: Since the
outset of the Syrian Revolution, President Barack Obama has been engaging in a
vigorous regime of Shirk ‘N’ Shift; the result: the worst humanitarian disaster
in decades, weakened allies, empowered enemies and the collapse of the ethical
underpinning of the Global Order. Furthermore, that American credibility that
Obama vowed to restore at the beginning of his presidency might have just
received her coup de grâce.

As the Syrian conflicts keep churning
new iconic images, renewed calls for a no-fly zone will likely keep falling on the
same indifferent lethargic arrogant foolish and shit-ridden ears that have
ignored them since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution. So, meanwhile, here’s
a list
of organizations that are trying to help.

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